China Mieville disses seasteading and libertarianism
in a piece that is long on beautifully-phrased vituperation and short on argument:

Libertarianism is by no means a unified movement. As many of its advocates proudly stress, it comprises a taxonomy of bickering branches—minarchists, objectivists, paleo- and neolibertarians, agorists, et various al.—just like a real social theory. Claiming a lineage with post-Enlightenment classical liberalism, as well as in some cases with the resoundingly portentous blatherings of Ayn Rand, all of its variants are characterized, to differing degrees, by fervent, even cultish, faith in what is quaintly termed the “free” market, and extreme antipathy to that vaguely conceived bogeyman, “the state,” with its regulatory and fiscal powers.

Above all, they recast their most banal avarice—the disinclination to pay tax—as a principled blow for political freedom.
...
Libertarianism, by contrast, is a theory of those who find it hard to avoid their taxes, who are too small, incompetent or insufficiently connected to win Iraq-reconstruction contracts, or otherwise chow at the state trough. In its maundering about a mythical ideal-type capitalism, libertarianism betrays its fear of actually existing capitalism, at which it cannot quite succeed. It is a philosophy of capitalist inadequacy.
...
The dream is not of open borders, but of mobile ones, as ferociously exclusive as those of any other state, and more than most.

It is a small schadenfreude to know that these dreams will never come true. There are dangerous enemies, and then there are jokes of history. The libertarian seasteaders are a joke. The pitiful, incoherent and cowardly utopia they pine for is a spoilt child’s autarky, an imperialism of outsourcing, a very petty fascism played as maritime farce: Pinochet of Penzance.

At first I thought I had mixed feelings on the piece, but after mulling it over, I decided that it's just crap.

Here is the comment I am posting to the article:

I'm a bit sad to see so much material apparently drawn from the book I wrote (Seasteading: A Practical Guide To Homesteading The High Seas), and not see it even mentioned. At least, the set of projects listed in the article reads like a walk through the Review section of my book, which seems unlikely to happen by chance. So it seems like the book was used as a source. I'm not familiar with the standards for non-academic writing, but in the world I come from, it's considered dishonest not to state your sources.

As to the content of the article: yes, the history of floating utopias has, to date, consisted of scammers and dreamers. That's why people like me, with a more serious interest in the subject, write web pages about how the Freedom Ship is bullshit, or spend lots of words in our books describing how wackos like New Utopia are...well...wackos. Floating cities are an idea that appeals to dreamers. (which again is why it's a bummer that Mievelle left my contributions out, since the whole point of my book was to take a more realistic approach.)

But just because the idea appeals to dreamers doesn't mean it's absurd,. For an SF author, I must say that Mieville has a rather sad lack of vision. He almost seems to delight in this piece at sneering at and belittling people for dreaming about better worlds. Without such dreams, we would have less crackpots for sure, but also less visionaries. Maybe seasteading is a hopeless dream, but I think there is at least a small chance that it can revolutionize the world by transforming government into a dynamic, competitive industry, which will benefit everyone, not just libertarians. Here's my article arguing why.

The bottom line to me is that it feels like the piece, while prettily written, is in essence a hatchet job by someone who demonizes libertarians. And demonization is antithetical to understanding. Yeah, it makes for nicely flowing vituperative prose, but not a very accurate picture of libertarianism's flaws, let alone a balanced viewpoint. There are plenty of reasonable criticisms to be made about libertarianism and seasteading. I've made lots myself, and heard plenty more from smart people who knew enough about the subject to argue about the actual movements, rather than the caricatures which Mieville paints here.

Anyway, if any readers are interested in seeing what the more realistic side of the movement actually believes/expects/claims, instead of just this caricature, please check out my book at seastead.org. The most recent draft is all available online.